September 05, 2006

Steve Irwin: a different take

Steve Irwin's death by stingray is, indisputably, sad, as almost any death of a young father and husband is. Even the fact that Irwin flirted with such a death for a living, filming the results to provide us with a little adrenaline rush, doesn't make it any less sad.

But all the sentimental tributes today don't change the fact that his act -- a version of bear-baiting -- was distasteful to many, including myself and, apparently, a great number of his countrymen.

Here, in a link found on Wikipedia, is a Sydney Morning Herald profile that explains Irwin to much fuller extent that you'll find in today's testimonials.

And below are excerpts from a TV review I wrote when Irwin's act was threatening to slip the bonds of basic cable and become a big-network fixture.

Some of it may sound harsh in light of today's news, but remember it was written in May of 2001, an honest reaction to a fame that struck me as questionable

[UPDATE 2:45 PM CST: Through the strange alchemy of Google News, this blog post somehow became the first thing people saw when they searched "Steve Irwin," and they saw it with a particularly provocative excerpt showing. That's unfortunate, because it was not intended to be a primary news source or the incendiary thing it has become. It was just part of this blog's tradition of posting some of my past articles when they are relevant to news events.

To reiterate: I feel great sympathy for Irwin's family, and I understand that he believed he was working to do good. But I think the most disrespectful you can be to the dead is to patronize their lives by glossing over the parts that troubled people. When I was working as a TV critic, I wrote a short review expressing my strong negative reaction to what I had seen of Irwin on TV. I reprint some of that below not to antagonize but because it was a reaction to Irwin different from many I have read today. If such thoughts will offend you, please turn to one of the many laudatory pieces you can also find via Google News.

Honk if you've had it up to here with Steve Irwin, the self-billed
"crocodile hunter" who has somehow migrated from Australia to our shores and
from cable's Animal Planet over to the big time, NBC.

"Crikey" (as Irwin too often says), this guy is insufferable, prancing
around animal cages in his little zookeeper shorts, taunting the
critters into
telegenically violent behavior.

There hasn't been a TV star this in
love with
his own imagined cuteness since the sitcom heyday of Tony Danza. And I'm
pretty sure there's never been one, not even Evel Knievel, who has
been so thoroughly asking for a violent outcome. ...

Most vexing is the attempt to pass this off as proper zookeeper behavior,
rather than simply the down-under kin to a hundred Florida roadside alligator
hovels.

Wife Terri tries to rationalize in voice-over that in Irwin's
cage-dancing the animals "get the exercise of the hunt and they get the
pleasure of chasing Steve off their territory, and Australia Zoo visitors
learn about crocodiles and conservation through exciting education."

The conservation message of Irwin rooting around in a female croc's nest to
provoke her then running away is hard to miss: It's about conservation of
ratings points.

[Weds. AM: Okay, I'm turning off comments now. I'm sure some will want to call me a coward for doing so. Others, having read through all the comments that are up already, will realize that it's pretty much all been said, from all angles. Thanks to all for reading and a special thanks to those who, even though they disagreed with its content or timing, took the care to understand the post in context.]

Comments

Wow, if people only got this fired up when Katrina happened. Are you all honestly surprised by this? It was only a matter of time. The true insanity of the situation is that I bet you posters have given more thought to Steve Johnson's article than Steve Irwin gave to the thought that his antics would leave his kids without their father. Live by the swordfish, die by the swordfish.

What the hell is wrong with balance? How does a man's character change the instant he dies? Irwin's family aren't sitting around Googling articles about him, so no harm is being done to anyone's feelings there.

Should I for some unknowable reason achieve a degree of fame before I die, I would expect any writing done about my life to include both good and bad from that very day on. Why not?

To the exent that criticizing Irwin's faults (now or at any time) discourages others from behaving similarly, it is a good thing and takes not a whit away from his accomplishments.